Game #20 (6-14): Thunder 104, Warriors 88

Warriors guard Monta Ellis revealed the reasoning behind his sense of urgency, which has him doing everything humanly possible for the Warriors.

ELLIS: “We can’t try to wait for guys to come back. We have to do it now. By the time we get our whole team back, it’ll be the playoff hunt. We’ve got to find a way to turn this thing around before then.”

Ellis is right. If the Warriors have any chance of being in the playoff hunt, they have to start winning some games now. Having lost four straight, they are on the verge of the season being done before the new year. That’s partly why Ellis is willing to create all the offense, guard the opponents’ best player and be a leader in the locker room.

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But the reality is that the Warriors just aren’t very good when Ellis is a one-man show. They aren’t much better with a two-man show. They need four or five players to play at a high level consistently to have a shot at coming close to the postseason.

Monday, it was just Monta. Curry poured in a career-high 22. But even his scoring burst was offset by 5 turnovers and the 26 he gave up to James Harden.

SMART: “Without a question (it’s too much on Ellis). He’s only 180 pounds and we ask him to guard the best player, play 45 to 48 minutes, and then also attack offensively against teams that are trapping. So we’ve got to address that a little bit, get somebody else playing well enough.”

Smart is right, Ellis needs to help. But some of it is on Ellis. As Smart noticed, Ellis got frustrated with his teammates and started looking to do it all himself on offense. He took more than a third of the shots and turned the ball over nine times. C.J. Watson played 48 minutes and got only 7 shots.

It doesn’t matter how good Ellis is, he can’t score 100 points, so he needs someone else to get into a rhythm. That is hard to do when the offense is him waiving people out of the way so he can have room to drive, or when he’s coming off a screen and chucking 21-footers over a trap instead of reversing the ball.

Certainly, his teammates weren’t making shots. Radmanovic was 1-for-9. Watson and Maggette were 3-for-7. Randolph was 2-for-6. Still, the answer is not for Ellis to take all the shots, but for him (and the coaching staff) to do something to get his teammates better looks.

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The Warriors had a season-low 12 assists and 88 points was even fewer than they scored in that blowlout loss to the Clippers. When the Warriors can’t score 90, something is wrong.

SMART: “We ask him to guard. He’s going to have to guard no matter what. That’s going to be a given. He’s got to do that no matter what. But we’ve got to get other guys making plays for him. And he’s willing to give it up and let guys play off him. But — as good players on the team will get often times if they see other players aren’t doing it — they start to force it too much. And I think he had a lot of cases where he forced the plays tonight. But, it’s a process. So I think we’re going to keep moving with the process and someone’s going to emerge and hopefully we get healthy and the team starts to come together a little bit more so than what it is right now.”

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Forward Devean George made his Warriors debut Monday. He checked in with 5:45 left in the fourth quarter and finished out the game. He missed his only shot, and had two rebounds and an assist.

George said he felt good, and he played just enough to even break a little sweat.

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Ellis did a pretty good job on Durant. Because Durant pretty much plays like a guard, his size advantage wasn’t much of a factor. Ellis was able to use his quickness to pressure Durant and stay in front of him. Durant could shoot over Ellis, but whenever he dribbled to create his shot, Ellis made it hard.

ELLIS: “I had him shooting 9-for-24, so I think I did my job.”

Ellis also gave Thabo Sefolosha fits, according to a Thunder writer who asked Sefolosha after the game. Thabo said Ellis was so quick and small that he was difficult to defend. Sefolosha is used to playing shooting guards and small forwards, players with size who like to use their body. Ellis has a lower center of gravity and he likes space instead of contact.

The Thunder ran a few different players at Ellis.

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Curry landed hard on his left elbow after a lay-up late in the game. He played the final seconds favoring his left arm. But after the game, he said his left elbow, which was iced, will be sore but fine.

CURRY: “I’ll be fine. It will be sore tomorrow, but that’s about it.”

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Marcus Thompson

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Monta was pretty bad on defense AGAIN. Giving him credit for defending Durant is a joke. Anyone can easily get by Ellis any time they want. I mean anyone. Did you see Matt Barnes just walk by him and dunk the game before last? He never plays honest defense. He just slaps at the ball and hopes for steal. Also his team defense is horrible as he’s out of position a lot and doesn’t switch properly. He costs us a ton of points every game just due to lack of fundamentals and defensive effort.

To be sure the Warriors have other bigger issues, but this idea that Monta is a good defender is laughable BS propagated by one of our hommer announcers.

samuraaaaiiiiiii

Games are slowly getting harder and harder to watch. They had a nice burst of good play after the Jackson trade, but that seems to have died down. I’m afraid that Monta feels like to be “the man” he has to win games by himself. It’s hard to even say that CJ or Randolph had bad shooting games because of how few shots they actually got.

Interesting thing I discovered while looking through the boxscore of games since Stephen Jackson left (11 games total): Monta Ellis has had 3 games where he has taken double the shots that anyone else on the team had. The best I could come up with in regards to another player doing that: Wade has done it once this season (20 games total).

A’s in 2010

MT2, you’re dead on. Monta needs to stop trying to do it all by himself, he can’t score 100, when we win its because we share the ball.

Marques8

Monta will get more help if he will start making the smart pass. I understand what they are asking him to do is a load but right after Jax left the Ws moved the ball. As Monta had those big nights, they started to decrease and devolve into Iverson ball. I thought Smart should have sat him down last night for a couple of minutes and put the ball in Curry’s hands just to see if they could get some better ball movement. Monta has to get players like Radmanovic and Watson easy shots from their sweet spots early to make them better player. If the ball is going to be in his hands all time, he just has to learn to be a point guard and move it. I say this with due respect for all the other things he’s doing.

Marques8

You got to give Smart credit for speaking the truth.

Burke

Airplane, if you think the warriors announcers are homer, try watching nba broadband on away games. Other announcers are WAY more homer than the W’s. I had to put in on mute for a while last night, rather than listen to the OKC announcers drone on.

Jeremy

Monta is forcing too many shots, even when he sees the open man in the corner. That needs to change ASAP, and should not only help his FG% but also his turnovers which are KILLING this team.

Morrow needs to be back for the team to have any kind of a shot at winning NBA games.

Randolph doesn’t seem to have improved his basketball IQ much. Athletic freak who is fun to watch, but makes maddening mistakes.

WTF is Maggette thinking getting two T’s in a tight game when the Warriors had almost no backups? Classic Maggette move there…. worried about himself much more than the team. This guy can’t be gone quick enough.

Man I miss Azubuike on this team. And Turiaf. And Beidrins. But why is Beidrins always so happy on the bench? He should be pissed and frustrated that he cant get on the court but he looks like he’s having more fun being hurt.

Perry

“Burke” ……excellent point about homerism…..

Homerism just makes my body ache…..

Anyone who has League Pass can see that most announcer tandems have a homer commentator and a former player of that prospective team as a color guy…All die-hard homers.

Anyone hear Grant Napier and Jerry Reynolds for Sac?

How about Stu Lantz and Joel Myers for the World Champ Lakers?

Scott Williams for Phoenix?

Dominique Wilkins for Atlanta?

Sean Elliot for San Antonio?

They’re all homer, including Bob and Jim.

I can’t believe Monta is even injecting the words, “playoff hunt,” in his post game…..

“Playoff hunt?”

Monta’s no playoff performer………

Playoff performers don’t turn the ball over like Ellis at opportune times in the game.

Playoff performers don’t dribble the ball of their foot during a key possession in the 4th quarter.

For what?

A 1st round hand-lashing at the hands of the World Champs?……No thanks, I’ll take my chances with 50 losses and a bunch of dissapointments…..

While I say that Monta is no playoff performer, I also say that we can’t really expect to heap too much more on his shoulders…..

All the guy has done is play every minute of every game and average 30ppg in his last 5.

The issues I have with Ellis is his shooting volume and less efficient scoring as compared to previous years, his turnovers and him getting down on teammates and thinking he’s Kobe Bryant while being unable to make his teammates better, …….consistently, like Kobe Bryant.

That’s who Ellis is though…that’s what we have.

We don’t have Brandon Roy, Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, ..guys who make their teammates better……

So let’s make a move and bring in a guy like that……..otherwise, it will be more of the same.

Losing close games and losing games we should have won.

All teams face injuries…..look at Houston…..no Yao, no T-Mac for years running now……do they fold up the tent and call it a picnic? No, they just find ways to win games because they have good players and good role players and a coach who has proven himself in the league.

Look at OKC and Sac for Christ’s sake………

What do they have that we don’t?

We have to start now, ………..fuck rebuilding….it’s time to win games now.

We’re falling waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind the curve…..we are decades away from even being considered a contender.

Where did Atlanta and Portland come from?

The gutter, that’s where….6 years ago, both those squads didn’t know which way was up…..now, look at them.

Remember Boston before K.G. and Ray? They were the laughing stock of the league.

I was hoping for a 3-2 road trip or dare I say it, a 4-1 road trip on this little swing that includes stops in New Jersey…..but I don’t know anymore, I just don’t know.

I think more like 2-3 or 1-4.

commish

Has Smart become so dumb to think that he doesn’t have a say into how much time Ellis is on the court. Limit his time a little and give him some rest. This new found one man offense is a recipe for disaster on many different levels. I thought Nelson was coaching the game in “Smart’s” body. 48 minutes for C.J.

This season so far is just a disaster because the team is making no strides in becoming a team and defining roles for the players. It is a typical Nelson and dare I say Smart hodge podge mess of players with no rymthe or reason.

http://feltbot.com/ feltbot

Nail on the head, Marcus.

Bleep

Perry, I actually think Bob and Jim are some of the better commentators in the league, Jim especially. Another set that is good is for the NY Knicks. Walt Frazier has some good lines.

Bleep

How much are we missing Azabuike about now? He would have provided another scoring option, and shut down Harden.

Blackgsd

I agree with you (Perry@8). The problem is Nelson’s philosophy. He still thinks he can win with one on one mismatches as opposed to having a system and players with defined roles who understand their job.

robert rowell

sure, dump on monta because the team around him sucks ass. they don’t have a single player on their roster who could start on another nba team, half of them probably couldn’t even make another roster. monta is averaging 40 minutes a game since the jax trade, the guy is spent.

but that’s the whole thing with the W’s and their “fans”. blame the players and coach for the team assembled by the geniuses upstairs.

DW

We just don’t have enough guys rite now, period. IMO if AR was more consistent, that might have helped yesterday but we still would have lost. We didn’t have Morrow and the rest of the guys just plain stunk it up except Curry. What could Smart have done? Why is he getting dumped on in this post?

Wilson

AirplaneRider, did you even watch the game, or just not paying attention to that matchup? Monta was fantastic defensively against Durant. I watched every time Durant got the ball. Monta anticipated beautifully and beat Durant to the spot time and again, caused a bunch of turnovers, and got Durant so frustrated that he couldn’t shoot over Monta, either. Around the middle of the third quarter Fitzgerald said that Durant had only 5 points when Monta was guarding him, the rest when others were on him. We can criticize Monta’s offense but definitely not his defense in that game. I agree that when he isn’t motivated he gets careless on defense. Monta’s defensive ability against bigger guards/smallforwards should be a major story but nobody’s noticing.

For anyone bashing Monta for having the “nerve” to even discuss playoffs, well, what the hell else should he be thinking about? If he made some comment about how they have no chance to make the playoffs and may as well give up, then you’d no doubt start going off about what a loser he is for giving up and mailing it in…guess he just cannot win.

With as decimated a team as I have EVER seen in one year so far (I hope there’s no more to “so far”), Monta is carrying this team as much as any one player could…they’ve been competitive in every game since Stack Jack left, except for when they played Denver and the Lakers, have even won a few unexpectedly and are not yet even CLOSE to being as full a roster as they will have this year…without Monta, they’d be worse than the Nets. Playoffs? Okay, not very likely, but still don’t you WANT your players to feel like they can win on any given night, and play like they can, and think like they can, and talk like they can? Or do you want them to be give it up losers? I’d rather see the swagger (as long as they can back it up with at least reasonably competitive games) than to see them just packing it in.

sartre

No one questions that Monta is the best player by far but Marcus raises a legitimate point when saying that in order for the team to have any chance of winning he needs to do more to make his teammates better. That might seem unfair but its an undeniable truth. It’s not like the others aren’t capable of shooting efficiently (Morrow and CJ over .50, Maggs .47, Curry .45).

earl monroe

Should Curry just force his way to the ball or should the coaches force Monta to put the ball in Curry’s hands? because leading the league in turnovers at a guard spot is not a good thing

commish

What makes all of this so silly is we are not going anywhere this year. Nelson (makes me sick to even type his name) may not even get his record wins. of course every game I root for a win so he can get his record and be kicked upstairs or whatever. The org in no way can consider him coaching next year; oh, wait, maybe they will based on their track record of stupid is as stupid does.

Meanwhile, given we might not win 24 or 25 games, why not reign Monta in somewhat so other player can learn to play with and without him. Not only would that be better for the team, the fans, but for his long term health. If Monta actually believes he can carry THIS team into the playoff on his back, playing 48 mintutes a game, he has drunk far too much Jax laced lemonaide.

A’s in 2010

Easy win on the road for the W’s eventhough Monta basically no-showed. Amazing what happens when Monta passes to his “suck ass” teammates.

Perry

Let’s keep things in perspective, this was a win against an abysmal New Jersey Nets team……..

I would hardly call anything about the win “amazing”…

Makes me wonder, I mean, New Jersey has some talented players, pretty good role players, hard to see why they struggle.

I mean, when you look at it, would you rather have Ellis and Randolph or Devin Harris and Brook Lopez?

I tell ya’ I’m torn on that…….I might opt to start a team with Harris/Lopez over Ellis/Randolph…

Anyway, road trip continues……we have to remain consistent, not just win a few winnable games here and there.